Russell L. Haden Collection

Note: Phoebe Peck, former Librarian of the Clendening Library, wrote the following description of the Haden Collection for the The Journal of the Kansas Medical Society (Sept. 1966, vol. 67(9)).

The University of Kansas School of Medicine, then in Rosedale, Kansas, added two men to its faculty in 1921 -- one, Dr. Ralph H. Major, was returning to the School this time as Head of the Department of Internal Medicine; and the other, Dr. Russell L. Haden, was to be Chief of the Clinical Laboratory. These men came together from the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit; both were graduates of Johns Hopkins.

With skill and vision Dr. Haden carried out his researches on blood an intestinal obstruction, which made him later one of the best known hematologists in the country. In the fruitful years which followed, to 1930 here, and in Cleveland to 1949, he wrote 236 articles and four books, including Studies in Hematology (The Porter Lectures, Series X).

Dr. Haden's sudden death on April 26, 1952, was a blow to the entire medical profession. He had retired in 1949 as Head of the Department of Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, but he was called back into service, as it were, and became director of the national blood bank program, a position he held at the time of his death. Only a month before his death Dr. Haden, always a friend of the KU Library of the History of Medicine, had paid Dr. Major a visit and found time in his busy schedule to browse the Library.

The books on the blood and the microscope which Dr. Haden had so well and keenly collected during his lifetime were left to Mrs. Haden. Feeling that they should be kept intact, she generously gave them to the University of Kansas Medical Alumni Association, which in turn would present them to the Library of the History of Medicine. They number 370 items, approximately two-thirds being on hematology. Many are later nineteenth or twentieth century works by such leaders in modern hematology as William Boworth Castle, Georges Hayem, Arthur Pappenheim, and George H. Whipple.

The oldest book in the hematology group is Nuove Osservazioni sopra i Globetti Rossi del Sangue, Lucc, 1766. This is the first edition of Felice Fontana's treatise on the red blood corpuscles. William Hewson is represented by the third edition of his Experimental Inquiries...Containing an Inquiry into the Properties of the Blood, London, 1780. There is the second edition of John Hunter's famous book A Treatise on the Blood, Inflammation, and Gun-Shot Wounds, printed in London in 1812. The first edition, 1794, of Hunter's book was here already in the Clendening Collection. The Haden collection has two works of Karl Vierordt: Die Anwendung des Spectralapparates..., Tübingen, 1871; and Mittheilung Zweir Neuen Methoden der Quantitativen Mikroskopischen und Chemischen Analyse der Blutkörperchen..., Stuttgart, 1851. There is, too, a compact little book, A Treatise on Hemophilia by J. Wickham Legg, printed in London in 1872.

As to the works on microscopy -- here again neither all the authors nor all the books can be mentioned. The oldest book in this particular group is Giovanni Battista della Porta's work on optics, Magiae Naturalis..., Antwerp, 1562. Thomas Moffet's book Insectorum..., published in London in 1634, was written about 1590. The Archetypa Studiaque Patris... by Georgius Hoefnagelius, with its copperplate engravings, appeared in Frankfort in 1592. Francisco Fontana claimed in his book, Novae Coelestium..., Naples 1646, that he discovered the microscope; Pierre Borel in his De Vero Telescopii Inventore..., The Hague, 1655, believed Janssen to be the discoverer; Govi in his study of Galileo, the translation of which appeared in the Journal of the Royal Microscopical Society for August 1889, concluded that Galileo was the actual inventor.

The first medical work based on the use of the microscope is the Historiarum, et Observationum Medicophysicarum by Pierre Borel, the edition in this collection being published in Frankfort in 1670. The first illustration showing the use of the microscope in medicine appears in Joseph Campani's Desciptio Novi Microscopii from the Acta Eruditorum, Leipsig, 1686. Johannes Zahn gives in Oculus Artificialis Teledioptricus..., Nürnberg, 1702 (the second edition), the first complete description of early microscopes. Robert Hooke with his Micrographia..., London, 1665, started a new era in microscope construction; the Clendening Collection, by the way, alread contained the second edition of 1667. The German counterpart is Johann Frantz Griendel's Micrographia Nova: Oder Neu-Curieuse Beschreibung Verschiedener Kleiner Körper..., Nürnberg, 1687. There are also works by Athanasius Kircher, P. Gaspar Schott, Carlo Antonio Manzini, Chérubin d'Orleans, Henry Power, Franciscus Redi, Antonj van Leeuwenhoek, Filippo Bananni, Johann Swammerdam, and Nehemiah Grew.

There is an interesting account of Fabio Colonna and the Academy of the Lynx in Fabi Columnae Lyncei (Phytobasanos)..., Florence, 1744; this book on the plant touchstone first appeared in Naples in 1592. Members of the Academy are represented in this collection not only by Colonna, Fontana, and Porta, but also by Francesco Stelluti, whose work, Persion, Tradotto in Verso Sciolto..., Rome, 1630, according to Dr. Haden, contains the first published plate made by the compound microscope (on the anatomy of the bee).